"Sure. I'll have to put on a fire to boil the water, so it'll be a few."
"I'll wait."
"It might be smart to stoke up the stove in case she wants a meal," Bhelgam suggested. "The Captain wouldn't appreciate us making her wait."
"I'll get the wood for the stove," Lhevatr offered.
He was drinking his tea and chatting with the cooks a few minutes later when First Officer Rhoird'myg stuck his head in.
"Mhoyt, brew some tea right away and send a mug topside with some bread and cheese."
"Aye, sir. Just so happens that I have a fresh kettle on now. We'll have it ready straightaway. Is it for the queen, sir?"
"That's right. The Captain wants a top notch meal put on for lunch, so the two of you had better get started. Whoddhurl, you take up the queen's tea and then lay to and help here in the galley."
Lhevatr successfully repressed a smile. "Aye, sir."
He carried the tea and bread up on a wooden tray. After considering the significant sound of the air that now passed over the skyship's hull, he went forward and took the stairs up to the corridor under the steerage deck. This allowed him to exit onto the main deck behind the windbreak of the elevated section. He found the queen, wrapped securely in her greatcloak, relaxing in a chair just outside the doorway. The Captain and Brendnt, the latter clearly acting in the role of royal bodyguard, were in attendance, but the rest of the deck, swept by the fierce wind of the skyship's passage, was clear.
"At this rate," Thylbr was said with some enthusiasm, "we'll reach Mhajhkaei by tomorrow afternoon."
"Will your magician be able to monitor the spells while I sleep?" the queen asked.
The Captain deflated slightly. "Perhaps not at this speed."
"Then we'll have to reduce speed to what he can manage."
Lhevatr presented the tray to the queen, who took the mug with evident gratitude.
"Thank you," she said with a smile.
Lhevatr took note of the fact that Brendnt watched the exchange but showed no overt reaction.
"Thank you, my lady queen," Lhevatr said in an even tone. "We are happy to serve."
This last common phrase was the pass code that Waleck had given him.
The queen shot him a sharp look. "Have you brought me anything else?"
"Yes, my lady queen. It's here on the tray." Lhevatr glanced down pointedly, though he looked not at the dull green disk little larger than a silver thal sitting innocently in the corner but rather at the plate of sliced bread and cheese.
"That's fine. Let me have the tray. I'll just put it here in my lap."
Lhevatr complied and then departed. Back in the galley, Mhoyt set him to grinding spices and he attacked the task with gusto.
He was finally done.
The Society of the Duty had no goals, no plans, and no schemes, only an oft-debated and ill-defined philosophy -- the promotion of the use of magic without the infliction of harm. Further, the group never organized a collective effort, leaving it to the conscience of each member to determine how that philosophy should be appropriately implemented.
In the last forty years, Lhevatr did not believe that he had accomplished a great deal in that wise. His own magical ability was negligible. His service in the legions of the Brotherhood had been motivated not by philosophical aspirations but by a youthful ambition that had eventually succumbed to the realities of age. His rise through the ranks of the fraternity had been slow and unremarkable, and only at the last as Martial Director, an office gained through a chance accident of war, had he had any influence in the ruling hierarchy.
Perhaps only today had an action of his actually swayed the course of events.
But, regardless, he was done. He had engineered his last intrigue and would leave the fate of the world to others.
As soon as the Empress Telriy docked in Mhajhkaei, he would take passage for Gkuyoien, find a small place to call home, grow a garden and build a fishing boat, and leave the rest of the world to fend forevermore for itself.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Thirdday, Waning, 3rd Springmoon, 1645 After the Founding of the Empire
Plaza of the Empire, Khalar
The shuffling crowd surged ahead abruptly. Pyntyr, carrying his daughter Zhue, gestured for his wife Lyhya to hurry.
"If we don't move faster," he told her, "we'll miss the juggling."
"Juggling!" Zhue squealed in excitement. Only four, she found words exciting in and of themselves.
Holding on to their dancing eight year old son Mlymhon with one hand and gripping the basket that had their lunch in the other while trying to keep her feet from being stepped on, Lyhya gave him a sour look. "I think you're more worried about missing those shameless women taking a bath right out in the open."
Pyntyr looked aghast. "Moon Dancers aren't 'shameless women,' dear. They're dedicated servants of the Goddess Miyra. And they are not 'taking a bath,' they're performing holy ablutions."
"Dedicated servants who just happen to be young, slim, and mostly naked. Hmmph."
Today was the last holy day of spring and all the temples had scheduled special ceremonies to welcome the Advent of Summer. The brass foundry where Pyntyr worked had closed for the day and he had decided to take his family to enjoy the festivities in the Plaza of the Empire. They had started early, but unfortunately it seemed that half the Lower City had also decided to do the same thing. The multitudes occupying the Avenue of Rhwalkahn’s Ascension had been so thick that it had taken them a full hour to walk from the Red Ice Bridge to this point, where the monuments and shrines at the head of the Plaza were in sight.
"My admiration of their nubile bodies is no more than an expression of my faith in the --" Pyntyr began. The large woman in front of him stopped abruptly, forcing him to do likewise. A man behind him was not so quick and bumped into him and then muttered a frustrated apology.
Over the constant serrated tremolo of the crowd, Pyntyr heard something that sounded like screams.
"Lyra, did you hear that?"
"Hear what?" she demanded, drawing Mlymhon up short when he tried to make a break for it between two older women standing together.
"I guess it was nothing."
Like a wave, a backwards movement shifted through the crowd. Pyntyr barely got out of the way of the large woman when a gang of costume wearing adolescents in front of her shambled to the rear without looking. Shouts and curses began to circulate.
"Pyntyr," Lyra said, sounding worried, "something is wrong."
"Something wrong!" Zhue repeated, wiggling around in his arms to try to see better toward the Plaza.
"Let's try to move over to the side," he told Lyra, putting his free arm around his wife to make sure they did not get separated.
Another shift surged through the crowd and now an uproar coming from the Plaza was quite clear.
"We'd better go back," Lyra told him firmly, putting her basket down so that she could pick up Mlymhon.
"Alright." He turned around and spoke to the man behind. "Pardon me, but we'd like to go back. Could you let us by?"
Looking concerned, the fellow, holding an unlit incense burner, looked toward the Plaza and then turned about and pressed against the stalled crowd. The impulse instantly spread and almost immediately a general, though glacial, retreat commenced. Another surge spurred it to greater speed and then there was a lot of shoving and more shouting. Within moments, running people started breaking through the narrow gaps in the crowd. One woman collided with another and the second was knocked down to sprawl on the pavement.
"Lyra! Get to that doorway before we get trampled!" he said, pushing his wife and son ahead of him toward the deeply inset entryway of a closed bakery.
"Wait! I don't have the basket!"
"Forget it!"
They managed to reach the doorway just before the general panic took hold and the avenue became full of running, frightened people.
Clutching their son tightly to her chest, Lyra, flustered and afraid, demanded, "What
could have happened?"
Pyntyr saw someone he knew, another workman named Thlee from the foundry, coming back from the Plaza at a dead run. He waved and shouted the man's name as loud as he could. Thlee turned his head, saw Pyntyr, and dodged into the entryway.
"Thlee! What is it?" Pyntyr pressed. "What's happening?"
Wild-eyed, Thlee shouted, "It's the Imperials! Some of them went up onto the portico of the temple Miyra. They said that there are no gods but the Emperor and they attacked the dancers! They killed one of them! They've killed a moon dancer!"
TWENTY-EIGHT
The 1645th year of the Glorious Empire of the North
(Thirdday, Waning, 3rd Springmoon, 1645 After the Fall of the Empire)
Khalar
When the rioters surged up the stairs on both the right and the left and flooded under the portico of the Viceroy's Library, Legate Stromhaeldnt yelled, "Fall back in rank!"
Ceannaire Pedgel and the other eight legionnaires, shields locked together, took measured steps to the rear, drawing back to where the frantic scholar and his two students were striving to close one of the massive, two-manheight-tall main entrance doors.
Standing just behind the shield line with his sword drawn, Stromhaeldnt paced backwards to match his men's retreat.
Stones and refuse arced from the crowd and thudded into the shields. A glob of unidentified rotten fruit smacked into Stromhaeldnt's helmet before he could duck out of the way. Curses and condemnations roared from a hundred guttural, rage-filled voices.
If the mob won through into the Library, Stromhaeldnt was certain that he and his men would be torn apart.
When the shield line had contracted to a compact semi-circle about the entrance, Stromhaeldnt ordered, "Stand fast!"
Another wave of impromptu missiles flew from the jumbled mass of men and youths, but the leading elements recoiled a good seven paces shy of the shield line. Apparently, none of the rioters was zealous enough to be the first to face the legionnaires' short swords. Then someone farther back began to chant "Death to the Imperials!" and within seconds the whole mob had taken up the condemnation.
Stromhaeldnt threw his head around and saw that the thin framed scholar and the two young men had closed the first of the ponderously moving doors and had moved to the second.
A cracked cobblestone as big as Stromhaeldnt's fist sailed passed his shoulder and impacted the closed door.
"Fall back! Merge ranks!"
He allowed the contracting front of legionnaires to push him through the opening and then danced sideways to throw his shoulder against the remaining door alongside the three civilians.
"Everyone inside, now!"
With an inarticulate animal roar, the rioters charged as the legionnaires broke ranks to dodge inside. When it looked like the rioters might catch the last man, who unsurprisingly happened to be Thilbus, Pedgel leapt forward, caught the young legionnaire's shoulders, and bodily dragged him in through the narrowing opening as Stromhaeldnt and the rest slammed the second portal home.
"The bar!" The scholar urged. "Quickly!"
Burk and Westlen had already snatched up the long steel-bound beam from its storage bracket along the side wall and they dropped it in place just a breath before the mob collided with the doors. The panels bounced and then rocked back and forth a span or so from the thud of angry fists, but remained closed.
The scholar hiked his traditional white and crimson robes and dropped to his bony knees. "Help me set the bolts," he told no one in particular. Taking hold of the protruding handle of a span-wide flat bar, he pointed to a similar one on the other door.
Stromhaeldnt quickly moved and knelt to mirror the scholar.
"When it lines up with the socket in the floor," the scholar directed, "drive it home."
Stromhaeldnt looked down to find the matching iron-lined rectangular hole in the tile and made ready as the door continued to move in and out under the irregular onslaught of the rioters. He missed on the outswing but was faster on the inswing and jammed the bar down half an armlength. This steadied both doors and the scholar, after shaking his bar a bit, also secured his bolt. The doors continued to vibrate in response to the pounding of fists, but gradually this fell off when it became clear to those outside that they would not get in. After a moment, another chant rose, but the hundred voice strong sound moved away.
Relieved, Stromhaeldnt stood and then helped the scholar up.
Grinning, the man bowed in a stiff, archaically formal fashion.
"My thanks, legate, for all of your aid but most especially for the salvation of the Library. What with the holy day, none of the staff are here and we would never have gotten the doors closed without your help. Those degenerates would have done awful damage inside. I dread to think that they may have maliciously set fires. If the Library were to burn again, I fear that the great institution would never rise again, what with all the talk of war. I am Lhyrchoos, scholar of geography. My students are Tyras and Splaend'n."
"My duty and my pleasure, sir. I am Stromhaeldnt, House of Penniyl, Thirty-Ninth Reserve Exurban Legion, Imperial Army." He gave the names of the eight legionnaires very quickly and then asked, "Scholar, if you are familiar with the Library, may I ask if there are other entrances that we should also secure?"
"Oh! You are right! Let me think." Lhyrchoos rubbed his chin. "There are only two other smaller entrances that I know of and these are usually locked, but it would be wise to check them. Tyras and Splaend'n know the locations. Should I send them with some of your armsmen?"
Stromhaeldnt readily agreed and ordered his legionnaires to go with the two students, then cast his gaze around the splendid entranceway, admiring the patterned tile floor, the bas-reliefs, and the illustrative murals of the ceiling. Something large struck and shattered on the doors, driving his attention back to their current predicament.
"This is the first time that I've been in the Library, Scholar Lhyrchoos," he admitted. "Is there a place where I can see out on the plaza?"
Lhyrchoos tucked back one corner of his mouth in a thoughtful manner. "There are no ground floor windows, but there is a catwalk that the attendants use to clean the chamber dome windows. I have never been up there, so I am not sure that you can see anything but the roof of the portico from that vantage, but we can give it a try. Philosophy would have the best angle, I would think. If you would follow me?"
Lhyrchoos led Stromhaeldnt through the entranceway, took a right in the main hall and then turned right again into a gargantuan domed chamber filled with what must have been literally thousands of books on dozens and dozens of large shelves. The scholar cut straight across, dodging efficiently around tables and down aisles to the outside wall. The lower manheight of the wall was covered in a series of blue one armlength by two wooden panels that were trimmed with half-round molding forming a complex geometrical shape. From a pillar faced in polished cream marble, Lhyrchoos counted left to the sixth panel and then pressed hard on the left of it.
Stromhaeldnt hear a spring catch release and the panel bounced open to present a dim shaft filled with an ironwork spiral staircase.
"I have seen the bondsmen go in and out this a hundred times," Lhyrchoos explained. "I have been tempted once or twice to pop up for a look but have never summoned sufficient bravado to do so."
It was a full three storeys up the clanking steps to the catwalk and the scholar, became winded by the time they reached it.
"I have never been enthused much by athletics," Lhyrchoos confessed, huffing as he dropped to sit on the protruding base course of the low brick wall that supported the windows. "I must take a rest."
"That's fine. Wait here and I'll take a look."
The catwalk was simply an unguarded ledge about two paces wide that circled the chamber. Leery of the drop, Stromhaeldnt stayed close to the windows and kept his eyes on his footing as he moved around the ledge clockwise.
Off duty for the festival, but wanting to just relax, he had been taking his ease in his tempora
ry quarters in the Blue Fortress and had just begun the tedious process of composing a letter to his wife when a messenger had arrived with orders for him to take a file of his section to the Plaza of the Empire and there provide assistance to the Viceroy's Guard. Feeling put upon and grumbling about the short notice, he had nevertheless acknowledged the order, donned his gear, and gone around to the barracks to see how many, if any, of his men could be rounded up. He had found Pedgel and the other seven, but all the rest had gone off to try out the taverns and other diversions in the Lower City.
Upon arrival in the plaza, one of the Mhajhkaeirii officers, who had been surprised but pleased by the appearance of the legionnaires, had given Stromhaeldnt charge of the Library. At first, there had been nothing to do and Stromhaeldnt and his men had simply watched from the high ground of the portico as the crowds began to pile in. After the plaza was full, though, a number of people tried to encroach upon the portico platform and the nine of them had been kept busy politely discouraging festively dressed citizens from trying to set up their lunch beneath the shade.
Thus occupied, he had not seen the incident that sparked the riot, but the turmoil had exploded so suddenly that he had to believe that some offence against the Forty-Nine had occurred. In the pre-Emperor Imperial Army, it had been an item of doctrine that the denizens of the Lower City would riot over the most insignificant of grievances, such as a misspelled syllable in the name of the Lord of the Obscure, Ply'nhor'chou'rhast'kif'slptitu, which had actually happened once, according to a legendary rumor.
When he reached the southernmost point on the circular catwalk, he found that he could indeed view the majority of the plaza through the slightly smudged panes.
The vast crowds had disbursed, but as many as several thousand rioters remained. Some were beginning to stream from the Plaza into the surrounding streets, no doubt bent on looting and arson. There were no fires visible yet, but rioters always found materials to make torches to throw into some patriarch's villa. The main temples looked to be occupied and defended by their respective partisan followers and had thus far suffered no damage. In the southern part of the plaza, a number of large brawls had broken out as groups tried to defend or assault a particular shine or holy place.
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